The relationship between Berlioz's symphony and Byron's poetic account of the Italian wanderings of his Harold is of the slightest, and any attempt to discover, in Berlioz's programme of the moods and incidents of his symphonic hero, definite correspondences with Byron's poem, would be more than futile. One who seeks enlightenment concerning the intentions of Berlioz in this symphony must fall back upon the composer's own brief hints as contained in the inscriptions appended to the several movements. The voice of the solo viola, as we know, typifies throughout the "melancholy dreamer" as conceived by Berlioz—it is Harold undergoing his adventures: in the mountains; encountering a band of devout and simple pilgrims; observing an enamoured mountaineer in the act of serenading his mistress; and, finally, involved in a tumultuous orgy of drunken bandits. Concerning this last movement, Berlioz has left us some additional information. Included in his Memoirs is a letter addressed to Heine, in which Berlioz gives an account of a performance of the symphony at Brunswick in March, 1843. "In the finale of 'Harold,'" he writes, "in this furious orgy in which the drunkenness of wine, blood, joy and rage all shout together; where the rhythm now seems to stumble, and now to run madly; where the mouths of brass seem to vomit forth curses and reply with blasphemies to entreating voices; where they laugh, drink, strike, bruise, kill, and ravish; where, in a word, they amuse themselves; in this scene of brigands the orchestra became a veritable pandemonium; there was something supernatural and frightful in the frenzy of its dash; everything sang, leaped, roared with diabolical order and unanimity—violins, basses, trombones, drums, and cymbals; while the solo alto, Harold, the dreamer, fleeing in fright, still sounded from afar some trembling notes of his evening hymn. Ah! what a feeling at the heart! What savage tremors in conducting this astonishing orchestra! You know nothing like it, the rest of you, poets; you have never been swept away by such hurricanes of life. I could have embraced the whole orchestra, but I could only cry out, in French it is true, but my accents surely made me understood: 'Sublime! I thank you, gentlemen, and I wonder at you: you are perfect brigands!'"
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Harriet Constance Smithson, born in Ireland in 1800, was a member of a company of English actors that stirred Paris in 1827 by their performances of Shakespearian plays, then unknown to the French public. Miss Smithson was known in Paris as "Henrietta." Berlioz married her in October, 1833. She died in 1854.
[15] Mr. W. F. Apthorp finds in the initial phrase of this introduction a reminder of Lear's speech to Gloster before the latter's castle (act ii., scene iv.):
"Go tell the duke and 's wife I'd speak with them,
Now, presently; bid them come forth and hear me,
Or at their chamber door I'll beat the drum
Till it cry sleep to death."
"It is quite as likely, however," observes Mr. Apthorp, "that Berlioz may have associated this violent, recitative-like passage with Lear's casting-away Cordelia in the first act of the tragedy."
[16] Translated by Mr. W. F. Apthorp.
[17] Paganini died in 1840. When the symphony was first performed at the Paris Conservatory, in 1834, Chrétien Urhan, one of the most famous virtuosos of his day, played the solo-viola part.